Days blend together when you're running from specters.
Sleeping is a myth. Food, an afterthought. The only thing that keeps me standing is this nagging feeling that I've overlooked something—something enormous. The case continues to shift, like an illness trying to be one step ahead of the antidote. Every clue unravels. Every lead rots. And I'm left with smoke and nothing.
I've gone over each report twice, a third time for spite. Kreel's autopsy. Surveillance reports. Known associates. Still nothing. The connections are close, like whispers behind a door I can't quite open.
Until tonight.
I'm in the archives, surrounded by the smell of mildew and regret. Files can lie on a computer. Paper—paper remembers. I work through old cases, unsolveds, redacted statements, anything that has Wolfe's name on the margins. One report stands out—not because of what's in it, but because of what isn't.
A warehouse fire on Blackmoor Street. Official cause: faulty wiring. Victim: unidentified male. DNA corrupted. Case closed in a week.
But I remember that fire.
Because I was there.
I recall the body. I recall the wounds—sharp, deliberate, carved. I recall thinking it felt staged. Just like Kreel.
I grab the photos. Side by side. Same angles. Same positioning. Same symbols carved into the flesh, faint, but there. Not gang tags. Not rituals. Messages.
And it hits me like a freight train.
These murders weren't random. They were orchestrated. Performed.
Someone's been sending messages for years—and nobody was reading them.
My breathing is rapid. I call Lillian. She picks up on the second ring, her voice thin from exhaustion.
"I need you to bring up the Blackmoor autopsy. Match the cuts. Check for geometric consistency—angle, depth, location."
She sighs. "That case was archived—"
"Bring it up, Poe. Now."
Fifteen minutes elapse. Then her voice returns, shaken.
"They match. Exactly."
I feel the floor lurch beneath me.
"They were done by someone trained," she goes on. "This isn't anger. It's choreography."
Cold rolls over my chest. "You're telling me we're up against a pattern killer?"
She pauses. "No. Not a serial killer. A method. A calling card."
That's when the second epiphany slaps me.
I recall Kreel's file had a flagged transfer. Not financial—medical. Off-book treatment two years ago. Registered under a shell name. I probe deeper.
And there it is.
The name of the clinic appears in another case. Same time. Different victim. Same death.
I speed across town to Sylvie's. She's lost in spreadsheets and records, lips moving silently as she compares patterns, tracks money.
"Found something," she says without raising her eyes. "You're going to want to sit."
I don't.
She turns her screen to me.
Bank accounts. Offshore transactions. And a name.
Elena Virelli.
City council member. Public reformist. Face of the anti-corruption task force.
Connected to Kreel by way of an LLC that technically doesn't exist. Payments made through real estate transactions—one of which was used to finance the same Blackmoor warehouse.
It hits like a punch to the ribs.
This isn't Wolfe.
This is higher. Cleaner. Safer.
Until now.
"Why Kreel?" Sylvie asks. "Why now?"
I don't know. Not yet.
But I think I do know someone who might.
I find Jax behind a boarded-up laundromat in Redhook, pacing like a man trying to outrun his own heartbeat. His hands shake. Not from drugs—he quit three months ago—but because he knows too much.
"You've been quiet," I say.
"You've been loud," he says. "Too loud."
I grab his coat. "Enough riddles, Jax. I need something real. Give me a name."
He swallows hard. "You already have one."
"Wolfe?"
"No." He glances away. "You were never supposed to catch Wolfe. He's the storm. The cover."
I knot my stomach.
"You want the truth?" he asks. "It begins with a name you've seen but never given a second glance."
He pushes a piece of paper into my hand. A location scribbled under it.
Name: Jonathan Drexler
Location: The Ridgemont Foundation, 11th floor
Drexler. Board chairman. City development. Political fundraiser.
It clicks.
Signed off on the Blackmoor rezoning. Approved the grant that constructed the clinic Kreel occupied. Served on a panel with Virelli two months ago. And most of all—he's been invisible all along.
The conspiracy isn't just a web.
It's an architecture. Constructed with purpose. Upheld with brutality.
And I'm within it now.
Not orbiting.
Within.
I drive until the streets become indistinct. Until my fingers cramp from holding the wheel too tightly. Until the city begins to seem like a trap and not somewhere.
They tried to mislead me.
They tried to cover up the evidence.
They tried to isolate me.
But now?
Now I have a thread.
And I'm going to pull until it all comes undone.
End of Chapter 8